Back to Flashing an LED!

Yes I got the LED flashing!

So I went a little further, controlling an LED over Bluetooth. I followed the guide over at Arduino.cc and installed the app on my Android phone.
The LED was already connected to pin 13, and to turn the LED on / off all I needed to do was send the 1/0 over Bluetooth using the app and the rather straight forward guide.

But can I automate it?

Sure, the application has a tool to create macros! So I created one called Blinky..yeah you guessed it! To blink the LED. All you need to do is record the steps that you would like the macro to reproduce.

You can give your macros an icon to easily identify them

Is the tinyTILE any good?

The board has lots of features, in fact the accelerometer example that I used for another test was super simple to use, and I can see this powering a few gesture based projects in the future.

Testing the accelerometer with my Ubuntu machine

It is a great board, sadly let down by the price £37.20 (inc VAT) is a lot to spend on a board such as this. Sure it has some great features, chiefly BLE and a small form factor, but these features can be added to other boards for a lower cost.

If you need timing critical data collection, this is a great board and worthy of further investigation.

Do I buy it?

If you need Timing critical experiments / applications that can send data over Bluetooth
Buy a tinyTILE

Else if you need To tinker with a microcontroller board that has Bluetooth and an accelerometer
Buy a micro:bit

Else if you need To learn more about Arduino and take your first steps with it
Buy an Ardunio Uno

Else if you need To gather data in the field and send it to a remote device
Buy a Pi Zero W

Conclusion

The tinyTILE is a really tiny Arduino board. It has a powerful processing package suited to gathering and interpreting sensor data, and it can run happily from a USB power supply via the micro USB interface.
The price is the biggest drawback. For seasoned Arduino users who need this for a serious project then this is a great board. But for those of us just starting out with Arduino / Electronics then this is an expensive first board.